A SETI Talk on 1I/`Oumuamua, the first known interstellar small body, possibly an asteroid which is probably coming from another planetary system. Its recent discovery by Pan-STARRS1 offers a rare opportunity to explore the planetary formation processes of other stars, and the effect of the interstellar environment on a planetesimal surface. Since its discovery, astronomers around the world have raced to use the most powerful ground-based and space-borne telescopes to collect information on its nature. Two astronomers, Meg Schwamb, astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Matija Cuk, astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, will discuss the nature of 'Oumuamua, its color and shape in comparison with known small solar system bodies, as well as its origin derived from its extremely elongated shape and its orbit. They will show how its peculiarities seem to imply that 'Oumuamua is one of the most important discoveries of the decade in astronomy.
Matija Cuk is a Research Scientist at the SETI Institute. He received his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 2005. He uses computer simulations to study the past and present evolution of the orbits of the planets, moons and asteroids. His recent work focused on the origin of Earth's Moon, as well as the moons and rings of Saturn. In 2014 he was awarded the Harold Urey Prize for early career achievement from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
Meg Schwamb is an assistant scientist at the Gemini Observatory based in Hilo, Hawai'i. Meg's research focuses on how planets and their building blocks form and evolve, applying ground-based surveys to probe our Solar System's small body reservoirs. She is also involved in the Planet Four citizen science projects, which enlists the public to help study the seasonal processes of the Martian south pole and map the distribution of ridges on the Martian mid-latitudes. Meg also serves as co-chair of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope's Solar System Science Collaboration. Meg was awarded the 2017 Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science from the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 and measured the brightness of 200,000 stars at unprecedented precision for over four years, with the prime mission goal of detecting Earth-sized exoplanets. Now after another four, Kepler’s final planet catalog is complete --- over 4,000 planet candidates have been found, with 50 of them possibly rocky and capable of having liquid water. For the first time in human history, we can calculate how common planets the same size and temperature as Earth are, a key component to SETI’s goal of figuring out how common life may be in the universe.
The K2 mission began three years ago, and uses the Kepler spacecraft to stare at many different parts of the sky for 80 days at a time. A broad portion of the Astronomical community chooses what targets to observe, resulting in a wide variety of science, including supernovae, galaxies, stars, and of course exoplanets. K2 has found over 300 confirmed exoplanets and an additional 500 candidates. Some of these are likely to be habitable, and many of them are prime targets to be observed by future missions, such as the James Webb space telescope. We'll discuss what we may learn about these worlds over the next few decades, and what future missions are being planned to find planets to which our descendants may one day travel.

Bring Elizabeth home from Mars/Venus

Your donations to the SETI Institute will be doubled up to $75,000. https://seti.org/match-s-video

The Anthropocene: What Now? - David Grinspoon (SETI Talks 2017)

The last officially recognized epoch on Earth, the Holocene, began at the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. Now, climate change, and in particular humanity’s impact on climate change, has led to the suggestion that we are already in a new epoch, the Anthropocene.
David’s most recent book, Earth in Human Hands, was named Best Science Book of 2016 by NPR’s Science Friday, explores how we can take on the possibly existential threat to life on Earth and consciously shape our planet’s future.
David’s research focuses on climate evolution on Earth-like planets and potential conditions for life elsewhere. He is involved with several interplanetary spacecraft missions. In 2013 he was appointed as the inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the U.S. Library of Congress where he studied the human impact on Earth systems and organized a public symposium on the Longevity of Human Civilization. His papers have been published in Nature, Science, and numerous other journals, and his popular writing has appeared in many newspapers and magazines. David has been the recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal for Public Communication of Planetary Science by the American Astronomical Society. He appears frequently as a science commentator on television, radio and podcasts, included as a regular host of StarTalk All Stars. He is also a musician and currently leads House Band of the Universe.

2017 FDL Talk - Interview panel and the End (SETI Talks 2017)

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.

2017 FDL Talk - Team 6: AI and the space sciences (SETI Talks 2017)

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
Team 6: AI and the space sciences
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
Team members: Morgan Henderson, Jack Collison, Zachary Werginz, and Justin Havlovitz.

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
Team 5: Space Weather: Solar-Terrestrial Interactions
Improve understanding of solar influence on Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere
Team members: Bala Poduval, Burcu Kosar, George Gerules, and Casey Handmer

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
Team 4: Space Weather: Solar Storm Prediction
Discovering new relationships and agents to help predict major solar events
Team members: Anamaria Berea, Dattaraj Dhuri, and Sean Mcgegor

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
Team 3: Space Resources: Lunar Water & Volatiles
Determine the location and most promising access points for vital lunar H2O, in terms of cost effectiveness and engineering constraints
Team members: Dietmar Backes, Eleni Bohacek, Tony Dobrovolskis, Timothy Seabrook.

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
Team 1: Planetary Defense: Long-Period Comets
Provide more warning time for long-period comet impacts by applying deep learning to meteor shower observations.
Team members: Antonio Ordonez, Jack Collison, Marcelo De Cicco, and Susana Zoghbi
Team 2: Planetary Defense: Radar 3D Shape Modeling
Develop a methodology to automate the backlog of neo radar imagery that requires shape modeling – and also improve the resolution of the result.
Team members: Agata Rozek, Adam Cobb, Grace C. Young, and Sean Marshall

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
Team 1: Planetary Defense: Long-Period Comets
Provide more warning time for long-period comet impacts by applying deep learning to meteor shower observations.
Team members: Antonio Ordonez, Jack Collison, Marcelo De Cicco, and Susana Zoghbi

2017 FDL Talk - Introduction (SETI Talks 2017)

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program.
FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.
A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network.
* Because of technical issues on the day of recording, the audio quality is not very good.

Eclipse Triangle is a very beautiful poem written by Guy Petzall. It is performed by Madhulika Guhathakurta and Guy Petzall.

Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for ET

SETI Talks will return on Wednesday, July 12, with a program featuring Jill Tarter, Sarah Scoles, Elliot Gillum and more.
In July, Pegasus Books will release ‘Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ by Sarah Scoles. Jill has been a pioneer in SETI research – it has been and still is her life’s work. Jill currently holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute, serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), is President Emeritus of the California Academy of Sciences Board of Trustees and continues to make groundbreaking impacts in the worlds of science, education and the arts. ‘Making Contact’ is Jill’s story.

The all-sky TESS mission will soon revolutionize our view of planets transiting the nearest, brightest stars to the Sun, just as the four-year survey by NASA's Kepler mission transformed our understanding of exoplanet demographics. Using the repurposed Kepler spacecraft, the ongoing K2 mission provides a natural transition from Kepler to TESS in terms of sky coverage, survey duration, and intensity of ground-based follow-up observations. For the past three years I have led a large, multi-institutional team to discover, follow up, validate, and characterize hundreds of new candidates and planets using data from K2. I will highlight some of our key results from the first two years of K2 data, and will conclude with a discussion of the path forward to future exoplanet discovery and characterization.

Dr. Gary H. Blackwood earned his BS, MS and PHD in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from MIT. He has been an employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA since 1988 and has worked on technology development for precision astronomical instruments and astrophysics missions including the Hubble Wide/Field Planetary Camera-2, the StarLight formation-flying interferometer, the Space Interferometry Mission and the Terrestrial Planet Finder. Since 2012 he has served as the Program Manager for the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program, managed by JPL for the Astrophysics Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

A Journey to Alpha Centauri - Christian Marois (SETI Talks 2017)

The Alpha Centauri star system is ideal to search for habitable planets by various observing techniques due to its proximity and wide range of stellar masses. Following the recent discovery of an Earth-size planet candidate located inside the Proxima Centauri habitable zone, Dr. Marois will discuss this remarkable discovery and the planet’s potential to find life. He will also present our current instrument project for the Gemini South observatory, TIKI, to discover similar planets around the two Sun-like pair located 15,000 AU from Proxima Centauri. The Alpha Centauri system is the prime target of the Breakthrough Starshot program, a project to send small quarter-size probes to take resolve images of these new worlds, and to prepare for Humanity’s first step into a new star system.
Dr Marois completed his Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal in 2004. The main topic of his thesis work was to understand the limits in exoplanet imaging and to design innovating observing strategies. After his thesis, he did postdoctoral researches at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Univ. of California Berkeley and NRC. In 2008, while at NRC, he led the team that took the first image of another planetary system (HR 8799) using the Keck and Gemini telescopes. He is currently pursuing his research at the NRC Herzberg where he is part of the Gemini Planet Imager campaign, and leading the development of instruments for imaging Earth-like planets at Gemini South and at the TMT.

Given the detection of several thousand extrasolar planets, a very interesting question is whether or not they have moons or rings. In the cases of extrasolar Jupiter analogs, the gas giant may not support life, but a moon could be suitable. Exomoons or rings have not yet been detected with Kepler data, but the directly imaged Fomalhaut b is thought to be optically bright because of stellar light scattering off a circumplanetary dust ring (Kalas et al. 2008) and the distant (650 AU separation) 11 Jupiter mass planet HD 106906b has been possibly resolved in the optical using HST (Kalas et al. 2015). Also, the complex light curve of J1407 has been modeled as a circumplanetary ring system with radius 0.6 AU (Kenworthy & Mamajek 2015), and the 11 Jupiter mass planet FW Tau b displays accretion signatures (Bowler et al. 2014) as well as ALMA continuum emission from a circumplanetary disk (Kraus et al. 2014). In this talk I will review these results, and then describe international efforts to detect the possible moons and rings surrounding the massive planet Beta Pic b as its circumplanetary environment transits the star over a six-month period in 2017.

SETI International Women's Day 2017

The women of the SETI Institute work every day to #BeBoldforChange. Extraordinary women are leading the way in all areas of the work we do: scientific research, STEM education, outreach, and finance and administration. The SETI Institute could not do the work it does without the incredible contributions of the women on our team. Make everyday International Women's Day.

Observations confirm that planet formation is a ubiquitous process that produces a diversity of planetary systems. However, a class of solar system analogs has yet to be identified among the thousands of currently known planets and candidates, the overwhelming majority of which are more easily detectable than direct counterparts of the Sun's worlds. To understand whether our solar system’s history was unusual and, more generally, to properly characterize the galactic population of extrasolar planets, we must identify how differences in formation environment translate into different planetary system architectures. In this talk, Dr. Murray-Clay will consider our solar system in the context of theoretical advances in planet formation driven by the study of extrasolar planets. Along the way, she will discuss several examples of physical processes operating at different stages of planet formation that imprint observable structures on the dynamical and compositional demographics of planetary systems.

Decades of planetary exploration have revealed widespread evidence for ancient fluvial activity on the surface of Mars, including deeply incised valleys, paleolake basins, and an extensive sedimentary rock record. Acquisition of high-resolution remote sensing data of the martian surface (e.g., images and topography) over the past 5-10 years have allowed for quantitative analysis of the large-scale sedimentary structures of martian sedimentary deposits.
In this talk, Dr. Goudge will focus on a detailed study of the stratigraphic architecture and channel deposit geometries of the Jezero crater delta deposit on Mars. Results from this study are used to reconstruct a scenario for the evolution of the Jezero crater delta and paleolake in which it formed. This delta deposit is a representative example of fluvial stratigraphy on early Mars, and these results can help to improve our understanding of ancient martian fluvial activity.

Chance observations of stars as they pass behind planets have provided some of our most valuable data on the structure of planetary ring systems, beginning with the discovery of the uranian rings with the Kuiper Airborne Observatory in 1977. As a graduate student at Caltech in the 70s, I became involved first in studies of the dynamically-curious uranian rings at Mount Palomar and later in unraveling the story of the even more baffling ring arcs of Neptune. I will review some of the highlights of this early work, which led to my current involvement in the Cassini mission at Saturn, observing stellar occultations with the VIMS (Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) instrument. Over 150 such occultations have been observed over the past 12 years, leading to the discovery and/or characterization of such novel features as self-gravity wakes, numerous density and bending waves, eccentric and inclined ringlets, `normal modes’ on gap edges and instances of `viscous overstability’ in denser regions of the rings. Our ring observations have also provided insights into the internal structure of Saturn itself.

Stars are the atoms of the universe. The process by which stars form is at the nexus of astrophysics since they are believed to be responsible for the re-ionization of the universe, they created the heavy elements, they play a central role in the formation and evolution of galaxies, and their formation naturally leads to the formation of planets. Whereas early work on star formation was based on the assumption that it is a quiescent process, it is now believed that turbulence plays a dominant role. In this overview, I shall discuss the evolution of our understanding of how stars form and current ideas about the stellar initial mass function, the rate of star formation, the formation of massive stars, the role of magnetic fields, and the formation of the first stars.

Exocomets: Now you see them, now you don't - Barry Welsh(SETI Talks 2017)

Present technology does not enable us to view images of these kilometer-sized infalling bodies, but the evaporation of gaseous products liberated from exocomets that occurs close to a star can potentially cause small disruptions in the ambient circumstellar disk plasma. For circumstellar disks that are viewed “edge-on” this evaporating material may be directly observed through transient (night-to-night and hour-to-hour) gas absorption features seen at rapidly changing velocities. Using high resolution spectrographs mounted to large aperture ground-based telescopes, we have discovered 15 young stars that harbor swarms of exocomets. In this lecture we briefly describe the physical attributes of comets in our own solar system and the instrumental observing techniques to detect the presence of evaporating exocomets present around stars with ages in the 10 – 100 Myr range. We note that this work has particular relevance to the dramatic fluctuations in the flux recorded towards “Tabby’s star” by the NASA Kepler Mission, that may be explained through the piling up of swarms of exocomets in front of the central star.

Asteroid impacts were a hazard to any life on the Hadean Earth. A traditional approach to geochemical models of the asteroid impactors uses the concentration of highly siderophile elements including the Pt-group in the silicate Earth. These elements occur in roughly chondritic relative ratios, but with absolute concentrations less than 1% chondrite. This veneer component implies addition of chondrite-like material with 0.3-0.7% mass of the Earth’s mantle or an equivalent planet-wide thickness of 5-20 km. The veneer thickness, 200-300 m, within the lunar crust and mantle is much less. The accretion of a large number of small bodies would provide comparable thicknesses to both bodies, as the effect of gravity is modest.

The Race To Find Alien Life Panel Discussion - SETICon 2012

The Next Big Science Revolution Panel Discussion - SETICon 2012

The Magnificence And Majesty Of The Solar System Panel Discussion - SETICon 2012

It has been scientifically clear for some time that the global community must decarbonize the energy and material system entirely by mid-century. In additional recent energy future scenarios have highlighted the pathways to reach this dramatic decarbonization objective on household to village to national and regional levels. The short -- few decade -- time needed for this transition demands a rapid scale- up on current and near-term technologies, while the long-term complete energy sector transition opens the door for an innovation and industrial transformation program. In this talk both the near- and long-term energy vision will be explored in the context of a clean energy economy, and the social and equity implications.

Support our Quest - Bill Diamond

Make a gift to support our search for life beyond Earth—your gift will be doubled!
https://teamseti.org/ddforms/support-seti-ye-5

Unlocking the Secrets of Nearby Exoplanets with the TESS Mission - George Ricker

Dr. Ricker is the PI of the TESS Mission which will explore nearby stars for exoplanets.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In its two-year prime survey mission, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 bright stars in the solar neighborhood for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances.
TESS stars will typically be 30-100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler satellite; thus, TESS planets will be far easier to characterize with follow-up observations. For the first time it will be possible to study the masses, sizes, densities, orbits, and atmospheres of a large cohort of small planets, including a sample of rocky worlds in the habitable zones of their host stars.
An additional data product from the TESS mission will be full frame images (FFI) with a cadence of 30 minutes. These FFI will provide precise photometric information for every object within the 2300 square degree instantaneous field of view of the TESS cameras. These objects will include more than 1 million stars and bright galaxies observed during sessions of several weeks. In total, more than 30 million objects brighter than magnitude I=16 will be precisely photometered during the two-year prime mission. In principle, the lunar-resonant TESS orbit could provide opportunities for an extended mission lasting more than a decade, with data rates in excess of 100 Mbits/s.
An extended survey by TESS of regions surrounding the North and South Ecliptic Poles will provide prime exoplanet targets for characterization with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as well as other large ground-based and space-based telescopes of the future.
A NASA Guest Investigator program is planned for TESS. The TESS legacy will be a catalog of the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars hosting transiting exoplanets, which should endure as the most favorable targets for detailed future investigations.
TESS is currently targeted for launch in late 2017 as a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission

A Message from Frank Drake

Make a gift to support our search for life beyond Earth—your gift will be doubled! https://goo.gl/eK2YtV
The generous SETI Institute Trustees have offered to match all donations up to $50,000 by December 31. Your gift is tax-deductible and will fund critical work in education, public outreach, and SETI searches.

Jill Tarter, Allen Telescope Array, Tabby's Star

Jill Tarter explains how SETI Institute used the Allen Telescope Array to search “Tabby’s Star” for signals of technological life.
Make a gift to support our search for life beyond Earth—your gift will be doubled!
https://teamseti.org/ddforms/support-seti-ye-4

Aaron Berliner is the Science PI on a recently funded NASA Ames SIF project to investigate Mars habitability. He will talk about the development of the "extreme conditions" Crucible environmental chamber. The project is a collaboration between NASA Ames Research Center, UC Berkeley, and Autodesk to build a system that will allow for biology experiments under extreme conditions as a step towards space synthetic biology.
Aaron will talk about how the chamber will be able to carry out repeatable and reliable biological experiments under conditions sufficiently analogous to the harsh environment. He will address the following perceived scientific needs:
(1) How to reliably replicate Martian conditions
(2) How to source and filter biology of interest
(3) How to characterize and engineer useful biological phenomena under Martian conditions
(4) How to scale experiments sufficient to characterize enough biology to form a basis for continued engineering.
The Crucible chamber will meet these scientific needs by utilizing state-of-the-art additive manufacturing technology, cutting-edge software architecture, and internet-of-things capable devices to produce a smaller, cheaper, extensible, distributable, scalable system for experimental space biology.

Recent observations indicate that super Earths are common whereas gas giants are relatively rare. Based on the sequential core accretion scenario, Dr. Lin will discuss how various physical effects which may lead to the prolific production of super Earths, independent of the mass and metallicity of their host stars, and the marginal occurrence rate of gas giants and its dependence on the host stars' properties.
During their evolution and depletion, protostellar disks regulate protoplanets' dynamical evolution and statistically determine the average and dispersion of the asymptotic orbital configuration of multiple systems. Tidal and magnetic interaction between close-in planets and their host stars may also lead to observable properties which can be used to extract valuable constraints on planets' internal composition and structure.

How galaxies are influenced in the Universe - Mehmet Alpaslan (SETI Talks 2016)

When viewed at the largest scales, the distribution of galaxies in the Universe resembles a complex, tangled web: an interconnected network of filaments of galaxies that surround vast, empty voids. Simulations and theory have established that filaments – the largest, most densely populated structures in the Universe - have formed in the billions of years after the Big Bang, and serve as conduits for transporting gas into galaxies, which they then turn into stars. Thanks to advances in telescope instrumentation the current generation of galaxy surveys is finally able to observe the night sky in sufficient detail as to accurately map the Cosmic Web for the first time, and begin to understand the role it plays in influencing the evolutionary fate of galaxy.
In this talk, Dr. Alpaslan will review advances in mapping out the filamentary network of the Universe using data from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, as well as discuss some recent advances in understanding how the galaxies that live in dense filament differ from those that exist alone in isolated voids.

History of Clays on Mars - Janice Bishop (SETI Talks 2016)

History of Clays on Mars: How We Found Them and Why They are Important for Astrobiology
Detecting clays on Mars has had a rocky history over the past 4 decades, but detecting them on the surface today is becoming commonplace. This presentation describes the instruments used for identification of clay minerals, where we have found them, and what their presence means. Most phyllosilicates require abundant liquid water to form and thus these minerals provide important clues for the debate about whether Mars was ever warm and wet or not. Also, some clay minerals are used for organic reactions and they may have even been involved in the origin of life on Earth.

Located on Curiosity's mast, the ChemCam instrument ("Chemistry and Camera") uses a laser to provide the elemental composition of geological features along the rover's path. Since 2012, it has contributed to the investigation of geological units that record a time when on Mars, at Gale crater, liquid water was present at the surface.
Dr. Nachon's talk will focus on the ChemCam analysis of geological features embedded or cross-cutting sedimentary rocks that have formed in a fluvial-lacustrine complex. These geological features correspond to a "late" stage of the history of sedimentary rocks at Gale, after their deposition in the fluvial-lacustrine environment.

The History of the Martian South Polar Cap - Carver Bierson

In the last few years we have found that Mars' south polar cap has as much carbon-dioxide as Mars' current atmosphere. This raises numerous questions about how this massive deposit formed and what Mars was like when it was in the atmosphere. Using a combination of methods including spacecraft imagery, radar, and modeling we can start to answer some of these questions. Carver Bierson will discuss evidence that these deposits may have formed over several cycles of Mars atmosphere collapsing onto the surface and then sublimating back into the atmosphere.

The radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the SETI Institute - Gerry Harp

From 2009 through 2015, the SETI Institute used the Allen Telescope Array to observe stars with high probability of hosting exoplanets. Nearby stars were chosen based on radial velocity observations that indicate planets, and a more distant set of stars were chosen from the Kepler Space Telescope's list of probable and confirmed exoplanets. By choosing stars that have planets we hoped to improve our chances for finding ET in our radio telescope observations. In this talk Dr. Harp will describe the novel technologies developed for this search by the SETI Institute and what we have learned from the last six years of SETI observations. Dr. Harp will also consider future directions the SETI Institute may take to improve on this search in the coming years.

Watch the talented Reggie Watts perform at the Exploratorium August 9th, 2012. Reggie was at the Exploratorium for an Osher Fellowship, and he graciously joined us at the end of a live webcast on Mars to share a little of his own feelings about the red planet!

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